Gregor Mendel's Genetic Experiment

1132 Words3 Pages

Gregor Mendel has achieved many scientific breakthroughs in his time spent at the monastery, especially considering the limited knowledge available to him regarding the fundamental genetic material of all life. The purpose of the genetics experiment that was conducted was to verify the Mendelian patterns of inheritance that were demonstrated in class actually were comparable to patterns of inheritance demonstrated by several generations of Drosophila melanogaster. Drosophila are a perfect species to do this experiment on because of their easily identifiable phenotypes, short generation time, and general low maintenance. One of the phenotypes observed in this experiment dealt with an autosomal mutation on chromosome three regarding pigment production. This mutation regarding pigment production resulted in the eyes of the fruit flies being either red or sepia colored. …show more content…

This caused the fruit flies to have white eyes instead of the traditional wild type with red eyes. The first cross that was completed involved crossing both male and female fruit flies with wild type eyes with both male and female fruit flies with sepia eyes. The second cross involved mating fruit flies that were females with white eyes with male fruit flies with wild type eyes. The hypothesis for the first cross was if true breeding fruit flies with wild type eyes were bred with true breeding flies with sepia eyes, then in the F2 generation there would be a three to one ratio of flies that had wild type eyes to flies that had sepia colored eyes. The hypothesis for the second cross was that if true breeding male fruit flies with wild type eyes were bred with true breeding female fruit flies with white eyes, then the F2 generation would consist of half of the individuals with white eyes and half the individuals with wild type eyes in a one to one

More about Gregor Mendel's Genetic Experiment

Open Document